Whyenvyrunsstrongestamongpeersandrelatives

The question everyone asks

Why is it nearly always the cousin, the colleague, the neighbour, the old schoolfriend? Why does envy so rarely come from strangers? Al-Ghazali answers in the Ihya' (vol. 3), and the answer has lost nothing in nine centuries.

Envy needs proximity and a shared prize

Envy multiplies, al-Ghazali says, wherever its causes cluster — and its causes cluster among people bound together, gathered by shared ties into the same gatherings, converging on the same goals. When one of them crosses another in some aim, his nature recoils, hatred forms, the grudge settles in the heart — and from there the rest follows: he wants to belittle him, to rise above him, to pay him back for blocking his aim, and he resents every blessing that helps his rival towards it.

Between two men in two distant towns there is no bond — so there is no envying between them. But let two people share a residence, a market, a school or a mosque, and their aims will collide; from the collision comes friction and dislike, and from these the remaining causes of envy catch fire. Hence al-Ghazali's famous chain of pairs:

• The scholar envies the scholar, not the worshipper;
• The worshipper envies the worshipper, not the scholar;
• The trader envies the trader; indeed the cobbler envies the cobbler — and does not envy the cloth merchant except for some other cause than the shared trade;
• A man envies his brother and his cousin more than he envies strangers;
• A woman envies her co-wife and her husband's slave-woman more than she envies his mother or his daughter;
• The preacher envies the preacher more than the jurist or the physician;
• And the nearby shop envies its neighbour more than the shop at the far end of the market — for the cloth merchant's goal is wealth through customers, and it is only the neighbouring cloth merchant who competes for his customers.

Likewise the brave man envies the brave, not the learned — for his goal is to be renowned in courage and unrivalled in it, and the scholar does not crowd him there. The root of all these envyings is enmity; and the root of enmity is two people converging on one goal that cannot hold them both. A single goal only ever joins people of the same kind — and so envy runs among them. (The exception proves the rule: whoever hungers for fame across the whole world will envy every rival anywhere in the world, however distant, who shares the trait he boasts of.)

The root under the root: love of this world

And the source of the whole disease is love of this world — because this world is too narrow for those who crowd into it. It is a room with one chair: every sitting is someone else's standing.

The Hereafter is not like that — and neither is knowledge, which is the nearest thing in this life to the Hereafter's wideness. Whoever loves the knowledge of Allah — His attributes, His angels, His prophets, the dominion of His heavens and earth — envies no one else who knows it, because knowledge does not become narrower for those who know. One truth can be known by a million knowers: each rejoices in knowing it, delights in it, and no one's pleasure is diminished by anyone else's. The many only add companionship and the joys of teaching and learning.

This is why, al-Ghazali says, there is no envying among the true scholars of religion: their goal is the knowledge of Allah — a vast ocean with no crowding — and their aim is rank with Allah, and what is with Allah has no crowding either, for the greatest of what is with Him is the delight of meeting Him, and the beholders do not press against one another; they only grow in intimacy as they grow in number. But when scholars aim through knowledge at wealth and position, they envy each other — because wealth is physical objects: what lands in one hand has left another; and position means ownership of hearts, and a heart filled with admiration of one scholar turns that much away from the other. Contrast knowledge: it sits firm in its knower's heart and enters the heart of his student without leaving his own. Wealth is finite things; the knowledge of Allah has no end and cannot be exhausted.

The people who cannot be crowded

Whoever trains himself to contemplate the majesty of Allah and the dominion of His heavens and earth finds in it a delight sweeter than every pleasure — a delight no one can bar him from and no rival can squeeze. Such a person envies none of creation: if another attains the same knowledge, his own delight is not lessened but increased by the companionship. Their pleasure in gazing on the wonders of the divine dominion is greater, al-Ghazali dares to say, than the pleasure of gazing on the trees and gardens of Paradise with the outward eye — for the knower's garden is his knowledge itself, a fruit never out of season, never withheld. Of such hearts Allah says:

And that is their state while still in this world — so what of them when the veil is lifted in the next? Envy cannot exist in Paradise, for Paradise has no narrowness and no crowding, and it is reached only through the knowledge of Allah, which has no crowding even here. The people of Paradise are of necessity free of envy in both worlds. Envy belongs to those driven from the spaciousness of 'Illiyyīn into the strait of Sijjīn.

The practical lesson sits quietly inside the theology: if envy burns wherever people fight over narrow things, then the way out is not to eliminate your peers — it is to move your heart's capital into the un-narrow things. Whoever's treasure is with Allah has no competitor, and needs none removed.